Offline / Pen and Paper Test Conduct – With AFPMS vs Without AFPMS

There is a vast difference in managing examination and assessment tests for schools that use an exam management system vs those who don?t.

In this article, let?s discuss in detail some of the processes where the comparison holds. For clarity and ease of understanding, let us break the discussion down into pre-exam and post-exam tasks.

Before the Exam

Scheduling: The first step before exam conduct is the planning of syllabus and test dates.

Scenario 1: Staff meetings are conducted classwise and subjectwise. The subject teachers of a particular class discuss how much syllabus has been covered; review the weightage of the chapters, difficulty level for the test and various other factors. Finally, the subject HOD along with the teachers plan the syllabus and schedule. This schedule is then verifying with regards to classroom strength and no. of students to ensure there is no clash. Post verifying, the schedule is printed and then distributed among students. Some students remain absent on the day of this distribution, some tend to forget to inform their parents /guardian while the notorious ones sometimes end up keeping this information out of parent?s sight. The class teachers then ensure that the parent / guardian are informed.

Scenario 2: With a course management system, all the subject teachers keep updating how much they cover in class on a regular basis and a graphical display of the initial plan set by the school committee / HOD / Board for syllabus completion helps them keep a track of their pace. Thus, the HOD is pre-informed of the syllabus covered in every section so it saves a staff meeting and time for faculties. The exam calendar is prepared automatically by the exam management system. This exam schedule is then distributed among teachers for review and verification. On approval, it is distributed among students and parents in their accounts and they are notified of it.

After the Exam

Result Evaluation: The teachers now evaluate the answer sheets of students and mark them.

Scenario 1: The teacher evaluates the answer copies, marks the students for every question, then notes it down for every question summing up the total score of the particular student. This process is repeated for each and every student.

Scenario 2: As the teacher evaluates the copies, they keep marking scores for every question in the result panel and the total is calculated by the system itself.

Scenario 1: Apart from the result of their own subject, the teacher being the class teacher now compiles the result of all the students of his / her class and prepares the report card. The time between results being declared and exam completion is limited so the teacher has to work really hard to match timelines.

Scenario 2: The exam result is autogenerated by the result management system and published in the class teacher?s account for review. The system also generates result analysis applying the concepts of data analytics and AI that the teachers leverage to provide student feedback.

Scenario 1: On the date of results when the class teacher gets barely a few minutes, to discuss anything further than student score is a rare chance.

Scenario 2: PTM is about teachers giving personalized remarks and feedbacks to parents on their child?s performance to improve learning outcomes.

Conclusion:

There is no doubt that the manual way of managing school exams has been standing alone successfully for years, but innovation in technology for education has changed the landscape.